Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine

by Berthold Auerbach

"The two things to be first considered by a man consulting for repose, as I am, are the kitchen and the stable."

He showed him the kitchen. There were dozens of different fire-places for the different dishes, and each kind of meat and vegetables; each viand had its special dish and pan, fire on the side and behind. The whole science of the preparation of extracts was here transported into the art of cookery. Eric was delighted with it as with a work of art.

Sonnenkamp pointed out to his guest for special notice the fact that every fire-place and every stove in the house had its own chimney; he considered that as of great importance, as he had by that means made himself independent of the direction in which the wind might blow. The architect had resisted him on that point, and he had undergone great trouble and expense to have the requisite flues constructed, but by this means new beauties had been developed.

Sonnenkamp now showed him the greater part of the house, through which electromagnetic bell-wires ran in every direction. The stairs were richly carpeted, everywhere were costly candelabra, and in the chambers broad double-beds.

Everything was arranged with elegance and taste, a truly chaste elegance and refined taste, where gold, marble, and silk contributed to the artistic decoration, with no overloading of ornament, and with a preservation of the appearance of home-like comfort. The furniture was not standing about like things looking for some fitting place, but every piece was adapted to the building itself, and seemed fixed, and at home; and yet the arrangement had this peculiar feature, that all the furniture appeared waiting for the inmates to come and occupy it, and not placed there to be gazed at by them in passing to and fro.

The heavy silk curtains, hanging in thick folds, were matched with the carpets; the large clocks in all the saloons were ticking, and the delicate works of art on the mantles and brackets were tastefully arranged. But it was plainly to be seen that this arrangement gave no physiognomical indication of the character of the owner, but was only the tasteful skill which every good upholsterer supplies to order; and, above all, one felt the absence of anything like an heir-loom. Eric could not rid himself of the impression that the persons here lived in their own house as if it were a hired one, and it seemed to him that Roland was following him, and that he must enter into the soul of the boy, who was already aware that some day he would call all this his own.

Sonnenkamp declared that he thought it contemptible for people to embellish their houses with mediæval furniture, or the imitation of that, while it answered the purpose neither of ornament nor of comfort. When Eric replied to him, that Goethe had expressed the same thing, Sonnenkamp answered: "That is very pleasant to me. I think that Goethe understood life."

He uttered this in a very condescending tone, as much as to say, that any one must esteem himself fortunate to have Herr Sonnenkamp recognise his worth.

On the north side of the house in the large saloon, covered with a red Persian carpet, was a half-octagon recess, in the middle of which stood a handsome malachite table surrounded by fixed chairs.

Four large windows, or rather four single panes of glass six feet in height, gave a free outlook; and in the spaces between the windows tablets of marble were inserted, half way up, on which were sculptured the four parts of the "Day" of Rietschel. The ceiling was ornamented with fine stucco-work, from which a silver lamp seemed to fly forth, rather than to hang down, for it took the form of a flying Cupid of bronze, holding a torch in his hand, and this torch, as Sonnenkamp immediately illustrated, could be lighted as a gas-burner.